French prosecutors say a suspected mafia boss who had been among Italy’s top 30 fugitives was handed over to Italian authorities after he failed in his appeal to stay in France.
08/6/2010
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: France, Italy, mafia boss
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A recent hearing of Italy’s parliamentary ‘Anti-Mafia Commission’ has revealed imprisoned mob bosses used a football results TV show to regularly receive coded text messages which were scrolled across the bottom of unwitting footy fans’ screens every Sunday.
Criminal organizations in Spain «know their days are numbered,» said Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba as he unveiled new figures relating to the fight against organized crime on Wednesday.
07/22/2010
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: Pérez Rubalcaba, police
Angry survivors demanded answers from organizers Sunday after 19 people were killed in a stampede at Germany’s Love Parade and officials announced an inquiry into how the tragedy unfolded.
07/13/2010
— Filed under: Crime, Society
Tags: Germany, Love Parade, tragedy
A tract of land including a volcanic lake near Naples cited by the Roman poet Virgil as the entrance to the underworld has been seized by police who suspect it was used by the mafia to host summits and hide one of the mob’s most bloodthirsty assassins.
Officers descended on Lake Avernus yesterday to impound the entire 55 hectare lake, a restaurant on the water’s edge, a B&B and a disco, all allegedly bought using drugs and extortion profits by the Casalesi clan, part of Naples’ Camorra mafia.
According to Virgil’s Aeneid, the area by the lake once hosted a mysterious prophetess, the Cumaean Sibyl, and an entrance to Hades, where Virgil’s hero Aeneas leaves the earth to find his dead father. Avernus’s otherworldly reputation is linked to its volcanic origins, with legend stating that hellish fumes that once bubbled up from the water killed birds as they flew overhead.
Centuries later, investigators believe the lake became a hideout for Casalesi killer Giuseppe Setola, who took refuge with his crew at the B&B and ate at the restaurant between 18 cocaine-fuelled hits in 2008, including the massacre of six African immigrants in nearby Castel Volturno.
At first glance a peaceful, vineyard-lined retreat for weekend trippers from Naples, the lake sits near the Phlegraean Fields, a stretch of gaseous craters west of the city and is close to two ancient underground grottoes touted as being home to the Sybil and the steps down to Hades.
The lake was owned by the Bourbon rulers of Naples and ceded in 1750 to an aristocratic family which sold up in 1991 to the Cardillo family.
After Setola’s arrest in 2009, investigators learned of his lakeside hideaway and launched an investigation. Last month a member of the Cardillos was arrested on suspicion that the family had been fronting for the Casalesi clan, which gained notoriety by building a criminal empire on profits from dumping toxic waste in the nearby countryside.
Setola, a former mob chauffeur, allegedly enjoyed the B&B’s stunning lake views while resting between the rash of killings he undertook as he rose rapidly through the ranks of the clan in 2008 after a series of elders were jailed.
The lake was connected by Roman tunnel to the nearby settlement of Cuma. Large enough for chariots, the tunnel remained in use until the second world war, when it was used to store munitions before being blown up by the retreating German army.
Today a veteran guide at the lakeside grotto said it not been impounded during the police operation. «They seized the lake, but not the grotto,» said Carlo Santillo, 80, whose family has been taking visitors down through the 200 metres of tunnels since 1875.
After watching police officers on jet skis post signs about the seizure, Santillo said he had seen no suspicious activity to suggest the lake had become a mob stronghold. «I have seen nothing and anyway I have no interest in putting my nose in other peoples’ business,» he said.
07/9/2010
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: Lake Avernus, Mafia, police
Italian police said Tuesday they arrested 52 members of the Calabrian mafia suspected of skimming money off the construction contract for expanding a motorway.
06/3/2010
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: Calabrian mafia, police
Police in Italy’s southern Campania region on Friday moved to arrest five suspected members of the Naples mafia or Camorra. The suspects allegedly belong to the Camorra’s powerful Casalesi clan and are accused of mafia association, extortion and using violence to intimidate witnesses.
A Spanish judge will face trial for alleged abuse of power in his probe into human rights abuses under the former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, a Supreme Court spokeswoman told CNN Wednesday.
05/15/2010
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: judge, Spain, Supreme Court
A «fundamentally decent» teacher who fractured the skull of a badly behaved 14-year-old pupil with a dumbbell escaped a prison sentence today.
05/9/2010
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: jail, Peter Harvey, student
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